One of the things that helps us avoid bashing ourselves and getting bogged down by life's challenges is to have a learning mindset. To look at everything (or at least most things) as a lesson to be learned. For instance, just yesterday, I read this excellent piece by Todd Henry. In it he recounts all the frustrating things that happened after he gave a talk in Colorado: dealing with a delayed flight, missing his connecting flight home, having to stay at a hotel overnight, missing the hotel shuttle, only eating breakfast all day.

Today is my 33rd birthday. Eeek. Every year, on this day, I’ve been republishing a version of the below post. It’s basically become a tradition around here. In it, I share what I’ve learned about building a positive body image, coping effectively and living a fulfilling, meaningful life in my years on earth thus far. Why 37? Extra lessons for good measure and good luck!

We often think that self-care is optional. Or self-care is selfish. Or it's about being lazy. Or we think we can finally access self-care when we lose weight. When we fit into an old pair of jeans. When we meet a certain goal. When life stops being so busy.

We think we have to earn the right to take care of ourselves. It's as though self-care is the reward for working a long day. It's the reward for acing a presentation or completing a project. It's the reward for skipping dessert.

I've written about this before. But as I'm reading Sarahjoy Marsh's book Hunger, Hope & Healing: A Yoga Approach to Reclaiming Your Relationship to Your Body and Food I keep coming back to my past experiences: When I was dieting, I was in a constant state of starvation -- in so many ways.

At the beginning of every yoga class we're encouraged to set an intention for our practice. I've picked intentions such as self-compassion and fun. They're simple but powerful to me.

Because every time I want to compare myself to the rockstar yogi to my right, I try to respond with self-compassion. I remind myself that everyone is different. I remind myself that starting anything is hard. That being new to something tends to bring out my inner critic.

All of us experience hard times. So it helps to have a toolbox of healthy strategies we can turn to. In fact, it helps to have a toolbox for navigating every day. Because so much of life is how we look at it. This might be anything from dealing with a difficult situation to tackling our to-do lists.

One helpful strategy is shifting our perspective. This doesn't mean glossing over our feelings. Because feeling our feelings is vital (and healthy). And it doesn't mean pretending that things are rosy, when they're clearly painful and hard or overwhelming or super busy (and overwhelming).

Last weekend I was browsing through the book Unexpected Art: Serendipitous Installations, Site-Specific Works, and Surprising Interventions. One artist's words -- Tomoko Konoike -- especially struck me: "I consider my body not as an object, but first and foremost as a 'place' for internal experience. I think of my artwork, then, as a sort of tool for shifting myself from this inner world of my body to another world..."
This made me wonder: What if we, too, saw our bodies as the places for our internal experience? As the containers of our ideas, questions, compassion, wonder, love? How might we treat them differently then?

On Sunday, in this post, I shared a list of ways we can navigate bad days. Today, I'm sharing a few more ideas. A bad day doesn't necessarily include bad events. It's bad simply because that's how we feel. Maybe it's lack of sleep or too much sodium. Maybe it's hormones. Or the weather. Or our subconscious. A nagging nightmare. An overwhelming to-do list.